Toronto Rail Deck Development | 239.43m | 72s | Fengate | Sweeny &Co

mcornett said:
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, there’s no way these condos are being built and it’s utterly delusional to think that this is some magical private sector solution that will result in any the advertised public space being built at minimal public cost.

Do people in favour of ORCA honestly think the sale of some 40-storey condos here is going to pay for the entire rail corridor to be decked over and built as a park? If this was going to cost the City $1.7 billion, why would it cost the developer any less, in particular when the engineering will be made significantly more complex by the towers and site servicing needs? The economics for building these condos at market rates simply do not make sense.

There’s a reason ORCA brought in Moshe Safdie and top planners to put together some fancy renderporn that will never be built. It was to convince the LPAT and others that somehow this was a real project, where the actual goal was to rezone the land to increase value. Now that they have been successful (assuming no change), they can either extort the City for more money to purchase the air rights or make a proposal that includes far less parkland and that will still require a large infusion of public funds for far less public space. It’s one of the most cynical scams I’ve ever seen.

And for anybody wondering why the City hasn’t moved on this until now, there were two years-long LPAT appeals by ORCA that needed to be determined before the project could even be accurately scoped or priced. What did you expect?

This. Is. A. Swindle. Get used to looking at the rail lines for another decade.
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Could be you're right but I don't think there's any big conspiracy here.
Their renderporn stacks up perfectly well against municipal renderporn like below which never had any real funding plan behind it, aside from some notion of finding $1B, eventually, from somewhere, assuming everything was on their made-up budget, once they got the land, maybe somehow by expropriation at untold additional cost, maybe.
At least the Safdie renderporn comes from someone legally allowed to do something on the land, I figure.

As for the math, I'll leave it to others to figure out real estate $.
I do know that if the decking + park is going to cost $X, it'll be a lot easier for the private developers to get it from selling units than it will for the City, with its severely constrained taxing powers. That seems obvious, frankly.
So, if you think the development plan isn't financially feasible, it must be even more apparent to you how much of a pipe dream it was that the City could ever pull off something this ambitious.

Also, I like Millennium Park, based on my one visit to Chicago :)
But that park was not built by the City/municipal taxpayers and it went way over budget. To think we could build something like that is literally absurd.

To conclude: your taxpayer-funded (and obsolete) rennderporn:

1620858561313.png
 
Would not be remotely surprised if the developers don't try and force the city to pay for the now much smaller park as part of this. That or they're just trying to drive up the expropriation price. Developers aren't in this for public good, taxpayers gonna get screwed somehow, one way or another.
 
mcornett said:
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, there’s no way these condos are being built and it’s utterly delusional to think that this is some magical private sector solution that will result in any the advertised public space being built at minimal public cost.

Do people in favour of ORCA honestly think the sale of some 40-storey condos here is going to pay for the entire rail corridor to be decked over and built as a park? If this was going to cost the City $1.7 billion, why would it cost the developer any less, in particular when the engineering will be made significantly more complex by the towers and site servicing needs? The economics for building these condos at market rates simply do not make sense.

There’s a reason ORCA brought in Moshe Safdie and top planners to put together some fancy renderporn that will never be built. It was to convince the LPAT and others that somehow this was a real project, where the actual goal was to rezone the land to increase value. Now that they have been successful (assuming no change), they can either extort the City for more money to purchase the air rights or make a proposal that includes far less parkland and that will still require a large infusion of public funds for far less public space. It’s one of the most cynical scams I’ve ever seen.

And for anybody wondering why the City hasn’t moved on this until now, there were two years-long LPAT appeals by ORCA that needed to be determined before the project could even be accurately scoped or priced. What did you expect?

This. Is. A. Swindle. Get used to looking at the rail lines for another decade.
Click to expand...
To be frank and frances though, I was personally taking this at face value that they are intending to build the infrastructure for a deck park while maintaining a percentage of it for commercial/residential use, for right or wrong. However, nothing I say in that prevents those involved pushing this alt-solution to the deck park are doing so for ulterior, self-interested and/or disingenuous reasons. I really hope that's not the case. But hope doesn't prevent the interested parties here from being bad actors. /bleh
 
WislaHD said:
I agree with the sentiment, but a significant chunk of Rail Deck Park would have come from Section 42 funds earmarked specifically for parks expansion. They can't be used for other things.

Though, if the private sector is going to pay for the park space here, this does leave over $400 million (I think that was the most recent figure? someone feel free to correct me) of downtown-designated Section 42 funds to invest in park space elsewhere in downtown.
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There's not a chance that the City will get all of the park built for them without having to turn over $100s of millions. The structure will be just too costly without major City investment.

42
 
Both plans seem pretty ambitious. City park would probably be phased over several decades not a single project. And if that's somehow too crazy, then how the heck would the condo plan contain as much park as they're showing? Answer: it wouldn't. Maybe a hybrid of a City park plus some condos.
 
TJ O'Pootertoot said:
Could be you're right but I don't think there's any big conspiracy here.
Their renderporn stacks up perfectly well against municipal renderporn like below which never had any real funding plan behind it, aside from some notion of finding $1B, eventually, from somewhere, assuming everything was on their made-up budget, once they got the land, maybe somehow by expropriation at untold additional cost, maybe.
At least the Safdie renderporn comes from someone legally allowed to do something on the land, I figure.

As for the math, I'll leave it to others to figure out real estate $.
I do know that if the decking + park is going to cost $X, it'll be a lot easier for the private developers to get it from selling units than it will for the City, with its severely constrained taxing powers. That seems obvious, frankly.
So, if you think the development plan isn't financially feasible, it must be even more apparent to you how much of a pipe dream it was that the City could ever pull off something this ambitious.

Also, I like Millennium Park, based on my one visit to Chicago :)
But that park was not built by the City/municipal taxpayers and it went way over budget. To think we could build something like that is literally absurd.

To conclude: your taxpayer-funded (and obsolete) rennderporn:

View attachment 319120
Click to expand...
I think you’re way too easy on the developers. At least the city threw out a number. The developers have no numbers - at all. Given how hard it is to turn a profit today when the price of raw materials is climbing through the roof, I question the psf they’re gonna have to charge to cover the costs for a park.

So…

Dollars to doughnuts we end up with a couple of towers and no park. There’s no magical private sector money that’s gonna pay for decking over the rails, and even if the towers alone are built we’re not going to get “high quality” space they claim in that proposal or those fantastical sky bridges.
 
HousingNowTO said:
Does anyone have any STREET LEVEL renders for either plan (Rail-Deck or ORCA) from FRONT STREET or QUEENS WHARF road..?

How high above the tracks is the decking going to need to be to clear the overhead catenary system for GO Electrification..?


View attachment 319115
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This shot is taken from their video showing the view from the steel bridge. the elevation looks approximately 9 times the size of the person next to it. if the average person is 1.7 meters, the elevation of the park from this street looks be in the ballpark of 15 meters.

Additionally, the street car is known be to be 3.8 meters, and it seems the elevation is 4 times its height which again gives you 15 meters.



yyy.PNG


This is one of the published renders from the POV of front street. It seems the tower is on ground level while there are stairs and an elevated pedestrian path leading to the elevated park


2020_08_14_Safdie_ORCA_Still_040_Final.jpg
 
allengeorge said:
I think you’re way too easy on the developers. At least the city threw out a number. The developers have no numbers - at all. Given how hard it is to turn a profit today when the price of raw materials is climbing through the roof, I question the psf they’re gonna have to charge to cover the costs for a park.
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The city has a number you've seen because the city is a public government.

Do you really think that a developer builds a single house, much less a massive mixed use development, without financing, pro formas and a detailed series of plans regarding what something will cost, what they need to charge to break even etc.??

It would be naive up think they don't have a number and because their obligations are to banks etc, it's probably a far more realistic number than what the city made up. We just haven't seen it because they don't have to tell us.

I'm not at all one of these "government should be run like a business" people "but come on.
 
@TJ O'Pootertoot Please note that the renderings were supplied simply as an argument for the LPAT hearing, specifically as evidence as to why this site could support a mixed-use typology, and what such usage would look like. The proponents were hitting back at the city’s characterization of this site as park-only.

At any rate, they are not plans with architectural work, financing, unit layouts etc, so all those pro formas and details you’ve cited don’t exist yet. This is why I question its feasibility as pictured.

Now, in the absence of publicly available information we can disagree, and revisit this conversation once someone actually starts building anything.
 
One concern I have about a park here is that won't they have to cut down all of the trees every few decades to rehabilitate the deck? The best parks have mature trees or trees that will mature and be protected. It's not good if the park has to be destroyed for deck rehabilitation and rebuilt every generation.
 
junctionist said:
One concern I have about a park here is that won't they have to cut down all of the trees every few decades to rehabilitate the deck? The best parks have mature trees or trees that will mature and be protected. It's not good if the park has to be destroyed for deck rehabilitation and rebuilt every generation.
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That is a legitimate concern.

I would imagine that one can make some design modifications to reduce the frequency with which this would occur; however, I can't imagine it could be avoided entirely.

Which would leave you totally replacing the vegetation every 4-6 decades.
 
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